Here we are in 2016

Back again for another year...

We spent New Year's at a ski resort here in southern Ontario. Those of you who follow the weather here will know that is a ridiculous thing, since it has hardly snowed this winter at all.

They did have a few cold days when they could make snow, so there were a couple of runs open, but there was not enough natural snow for tubing, no ice for skating on. And of course, the "hill" is not really up to BC skiing standards. Which is all actually okay since I haven't skied for years, the kids are moderately interested but you can't do much in one day, we don't own any equipment, etc, etc.

All the windows had mesh on them

So we watched people ski, we played some board games and ate some chips, we listened to the pop radio station they play all day long to the lift lines! They did have a great fireworks display at 10 pm on the 31st, which we could see perfectly from our "slope-side condo."

But then, sadly for us, the party continued till 2 am in the pub, and we could hear the whole thing.

Of course, I needed car knitting, even though it is less than a two-hour drive from here. Everything I have, as always, is at a point where I should have the pattern with me, or I need to think a wee bit, so I started something new.

I'm not sure if I showed you the yarn I got at a Textile Museum sale in the fall. I got a bag of 8 or 10 little balls of leftover sock yarn. Some of it is pretty fancy wool/silk/alpaca, but there were two balls of pretty ordinary stuff, black and white mottled. It was wound, but I imagine there was most of 2 50-gram balls.

I held the two strands together and cast on 80 stitches on a 4.5 mm circular needle. The fabric turned out to be not as dense as I might like for a hat, but we were zooming down the highway when I found that out and there was nothing for it but to carry on. (As it turned out, 80 stitches was not quite enough for an adult-sized head, either.)

Two-by-two ribbing till it was long enough for a hat, and I still had quite a bit of yarn left.

So I continued on to make a balaclava. (Cast off half the stitches, rib three rows, cast back on again.) For maybe a 10-year-old. 

You can see it is a tad tight on Arthur.

It will go in the 1000 Stitches for Syria box.

Ah, and looking at my phone pictures, I see I did get one of Arthur in his new hat! Photo-bombed by his dad...